


Titles

by MaryDragon



Series: Noble Thief [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: ALL THE SPOILERS, Ensemble Cast, Established Relationship, F/M, Multi, Spoilers for everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-14 16:57:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3418430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryDragon/pseuds/MaryDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They called me a hero, the Hero of Ferelden, the Hero of the Fifth Blight.<br/>That wasn't the title I preferred, nor the role I wanted to fill.<br/>My only regrets are the options I didn't have.</p><p>*</p><p>Vignettes; chronologically interspersed within the first two parts of the series. Notes on each chapter will explain where each section falls on the timeline, in case there is any confusion. Told from the point of view of Moira Cousland Theirin: warrior, warden, Queen of Ferelden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Warden

**Author's Note:**

> Since my Muse wanted this in the First Person, I guess Moira Cousland is the actual main character in this series. Who knew?
> 
> *
> 
> The events of this chapter fall immediately after Chapter 3 of Of Fear and Lyrium (The Bear Vendetta).

It was just past dark when I heard her horse.

I didn’t know it was her, of course. I’m good, but I’m not _that_ good. And she isn’t a darkspawn, or a warden, or – thank the Maker – a poor soul with the blight sickness. I cannot hear the taint singing in her veins.

I slid into the bushes that lined the base of the ravine. It would be obvious someone was camping here, but as long as whoever the intruder was didn’t see _me_ I could still have the element of surprise. I loosened my sword in its scabbard and slid my dagger from its sheath, flipping the blade into my hand in preparation for a throw.

The number of people who know about this ravine can be counted on my fingers, and I had personally showed it to each of them. I’ve never seen any evidence that another soul had found the trail hidden on the lip of the ravine, just wide enough for a horse. The bottom curls around a boulder and disappears into an overhang that then opens out into a perfect view of the eastern sky. There’s even a back way out – a long winding path Morrigan scouted the first night we stayed here. She was in spider form at the time, which was beyond creepy to watch, but she found a way we could get the horses out and _eventually_ make our way back to the road. We’d never had to use it; a small blessing in an incredibly long list of relative miracles.

The horse stopped short of the light of the fire. There was a glint of reflection of light off the bit when she threw her head in displeasure. The horse was Fereldan, a fine chestnut forder that was immediately identifiable as one of Horsemaster Dennett’s. The rider was either a thief, was wealthy, or…

…or was someone from the Inquisition, since I’d heard the acclaimed Herald had conscripted Dennett from the Hinterlands and left with him for Haven.

Which dropped the number of people it could be to just one. But I stayed in the bushes; I hadn’t lived this long by trusting to luck and logic alone.

“When I heard you had left Orlais, I knew where you would be,” her voice ghosted from somewhere behind the horse’s head. “And I know you’re in the bush behind the tent, to draw attention away from the lovely Bella if need be.”

My mare, Bella, whickered lightly at her name, and danced a step closer to the newcomer. I knew the feeling.

I stood with a laugh. “I guessed it was you,” I admitted. “But old habits die hard.”

“That sort of habit kept you alive,” Leliana said as she swung down from her horse. I stepped into the firelight as she stood across the camp from me. “It is so good to see you, Moira,” she told me, her voice light, the familiar accent drawing a smile as it tripped over the vowels in my name.

“And you,” I replied. “I would show you the best place to hobble your horse, but…”

Leliana laughed. “I may have been here a time or two before.”

While she worked to care for her mount – a new acquisition from Master Dennett, she verified – I dug some extra food out of my pack, fortifying the single serving of stew I’d set to bubbling over my fire. Zev had ranged for miles when we’d happened to camp here on a clear night, and could never see any sign of our fire, neither light nor smoke. We had built as strong a blaze as we could every night after, and slept easily.

“I brought some additions to your stores,” she said, handing me a satchel from her bags. It was full of cold ham and cheese, protected by a heavily runed waxed cloth. “The rune will break as soon as you open it, so there’s three or four individually wrapped packets there. Should keep you for awhile, at least.”

“A princely gift,” I said, and meant it. I didn’t know the Inquisition already had access to the kind of magic it would take to not just make this, but to essentially throw it away.

“So the Inquisition is off to a good start, I take it.”

Leliana shook her head sadly. “We lost so much, when the Conclave was destroyed. We are off to _a_ start, I can say. But no more.”

We talked then, of news. I told her what little I could of my quest; I trusted her with my life, but she is not a warden. She neither needs nor deserves my burdens, not in that. She explained to me what they had pieced together of the tragedy of the Conclave, the strange woman who had seemingly fallen out of the sky, and what the Herald had already accomplished.

“Do you believe she was sent by the Maker?” I asked, knowing that was the critical point for Leliana to have decided.

“I have to,” she answered evenly. “Regardless of whether it was Andraste who was seen behind her in the Fade, regardless of whether she was literally sent back to us by the Bride of the Maker; I have to believe she is our salvation. She must be our answer, or else we have already lost. There is nothing else.”

“That is a lot of pressure for one woman.”

“As well you would know.”

I laughed. She was mostly right. “I had it a bit better. I at least had Alistair. If I fell, there would still be _one_ warden in Ferelden to keep the fight alive. Your Herald has no understudy.”

“Evelyn,” Leliana said carefully, and I heard the name of the Herald for the first time. “Evelyn Trevelyan, a musical sort of name. She may be our salvation. She is a rogue, a noble from Ostwick in the Free Marches, and an Andrastian so devout she believes it could _not possibly_ have been Andraste behind her in the Fade. And, if I allow myself to hope, my friend.”

“And do you? Allow yourself to hope?”

She laughed then, unexpectedly, and tugged open the neck of the chainmail tunic she wore. I could see, then, the discoloration of her skin. “We spent much of the day yesterday dueling in the forest above Haven, looking up at the Breach and down on our allies. She beat me, handily, I must admit. She said having a legion of my own scouts and spies had dulled my edge, and she wants me to train with her, in secret.”

“You’ve abandoned your bow, then?”

Another laugh, more unexpected than the first. “Not by half. _That_ I can practice in the open.”

“You’re happy,” I said, giving voice to the obvious. “I can’t remember seeing you this happy in ages.”

“It is strange,” Leliana agreed. “With Justinia’s death, I was angry. Disillusioned. I admit to having my faith shaken. And when Ev – when the Herald asked me about it, I found myself telling her. She opened me up and drew the poison out of me, letting it pour away. She had no words for me, no comfort. She merely climbed onto one of the few horses we had left and rode to the Hinterlands and started fixing the world.”

“Actions were always louder than words with you.”

“And, oh, Moira, the missives she sent. I should have brought you one, you would love it. Her last before she left the Hinterlands the first time, before she went back to build the watch towers, was so laced with profanity I couldn’t read it aloud! Josephine went five shades of purple, and Cullen… you should have seen Cullen laugh. I didn’t know Cullen _could_ laugh, but she has him smiling from ear to ear out of anticipation when the ravens arrive.”

“Maker knows Cullen needs to remember to laugh. I hear he went to _Kirkwall_ after what happened at Kinloch, and then he gets to Haven just in time for the Conclave to get wiped out of existence. The man has horrible luck.”

“They are cut from the same cloth, Cullen and Evelyn. I think she helps him remember who he used to be, who he wanted to be, before he was thrown into the worst of the world.”

“How so?” I asked, just wanting her to keep talking. It was so easy to get lost in her accent, her voice.

“Just yesterday,” she said, fighting to keep her composure as she remembered, “we got a missive that some of our soldiers were being held for ransom. We hadn’t gotten any more information than that, and she was _furious_. She left for Val Royeaux this morning, and the idea that more of our men might be dead before she had a chance to rescue them – and the abductors specifically asked for her to come and negotiate their release – had her out of her mind. She and Cullen went back and forth, getting more and more angry with one another, and then she… she _flipped the table_ and stormed out.”

I couldn’t help it, I threw my head back and laughed. “Your noble little Herald has a _temper_ ,” I said when I could manage it.

“And I am bruised from my chin to my toes to prove it. I followed her, and her _working out her aggression_ is what led to our battered states. I promise she looks as bad as I do.”

We both laughed, then, and I noticed the stew was boiling. We fell silent while eating; Leliana had a bottle of dry red wine she fished out of her saddle bag and we passed it back and forth, foregoing goblets. When the pot was empty, I filled it with water – there was a small spring in the ravine, but I didn’t trust it to drink – and put it back on to boil, to clean. We sat opposite each other, the fire between us, the ravine drawing sounds toward us and swallowing any noise we made.

“Why are you really here?” I asked her.

She smiled at me again, the patronizing one I got when I was forgetting something obvious. “Moira. It is your birthday.”

I thought back, doing the math in my head from the last time I knew what day it was. “Huh. So it is.”

Leliana laughed at me, shaking her head. “How do you never remember?”

“I know what _day_ my birthday is. I don’t know what day _today_ is.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded.

“You put yourself on a horse and rode out here on a whim to remind me of my birthday?” I couldn’t really believe it. I had broken her heart and married another nearly a decade before; surely we had both moved on from this.

“I knew you were seen in Orlais,” she answered evenly. “I knew which direction you were going, which means I knew _where_ you were going. But what I didn’t know – what nobody knew – is _why_ you’re on the move. And some part of me hoped it was because you were coming to Haven, you were going to help us.”

“Warden Commander Clarel has taken all the Orlesian Wardens and _left,_ ” I told her, doing my best to give her information without damaging my oaths to the Order. “I can do very little to help you against the swirling hole in the sky. But I _can_ do something about the Orlesian Wardens. I can do something to try to keep Ferelden from spiraling into another civil war. And if I learn anything about where they went and why, I will let you know. But for now, I must follow my own path.”

She tipped her chin briefly in acknowledgement. “Then what we need to do is forego business.”

My face must have been priceless, because she burst out laughing. “I mean, we need to remember we are two old friends, and today is your birthday. I have another bottle of wine – something much sweeter for dessert – and we will sit here and reminisce like we’re two _people_ and not at all involved in trying to solve the world’s problems.”

The hours flew by. The wine didn’t last half as long as we did. Leliana reminded me of victories and happy moments that I had forgotten in the grander scheme of the Blight. Rufus’ vendetta against Morrigan’s underwear had us both in happy tears. We theorized about what was actually going on with Sandal, and exchanged rumors about where all of our companions were.

She told me Wynne had passed, and what little information she had about how. Sten was the new Arishok, somewhere up in Seheron. Zev was still on the run, sadly, but he came back to Denerim whenever he could. He was spending a lot of time in the Free Marches of late; the chaos was good for laying low. Bodahn had been in Kirkwall, too, but last Leliana knew he was in Val Royeaux, working for the Divine. Where he was now, with the Divine gone, was anybody’s guess. Morrigan, too, was in Val Royeaux, an advisor to Empress Celene. Leliana told me of the oddity that was Morrigan’s son, and I clenched my jaw with the effort of keeping my face straight.

It was a testament to our friendship that she had never asked. She seemed to respect that I couldn’t tell.

“I’m running out of time,” I told her when it had been silent for too long. “I’m somehow farther along in deterioration than Alistair, having dreams twice as often; I don’t have the heart to tell him. He’s going to meet me in Redcliffe, he’s gathering the army to try and restore order; well, what order your Herald hasn't brought. The blight, the taint, the progression... it’s not an any-day-now kind of thing. It’s not an exact science, either, but I feel like I still have years left. Just not as many as a 30-year-old woman should have.”

“Is that what you seek? Longevity?”

I shook my head. She knew better, I could hear the lack of conviction in her question. “I seek High Enchanter Fiona. She used to be a Warden, over 30 years ago. _Used_ to be a Warden. Whatever the secret, it lies with her.”

“The rumor is she is in Redcliffe. The Inquisition needs to ally with either the Templars or the rogue mages in order to generate the power needed to seal the Breach, so we have been looking for Fiona. If I am able to narrow it down, I could send you word?”

“Thank you,” I told her. “I will likely have to wait until Alistair arrives with the army to attempt to enter Redcliffe.”

“If am able to convince Evelyn to choose the mages, you may be able to enter on our coattails.”

“Convince Evelyn? Evelyn is making those decisions? The stranger who fell out of a hole in the sky?”

Leliana nodded, laughing in spite of herself. “It sounds… completely insane, I know. But she is the same bright spot in the darkness that you were. She is the answer, and we have chosen to follow her. We will name her Inquisitor, formalize her leadership, as soon as we can get her to stop for ceremony.”

“And why her, instead of Seeker Penteghast?”

“Cassandra was never meant to lead, not like this. She is too much like Cullen, she has too long been a soldier. They both find comfort in receiving orders, in following plans and established protocols. Cassandra has taken to defending Evelyn, of sacrificing her body for the Herald’s. I think she’s the most ardent believer of us all.”

“And we’ve come right back around to discussing business,” I said with a laugh.

“What else is there, but business and the past?”

I blinked, surprised. “Lana…”

“I still love you,” she said, and I felt myself swallow, hard. “I know it’s been _ages_ but I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you. I left because we both needed me to. I left because you realized we could never be equals, I left because I needed to find someplace where I could thrive. I needed to find someplace outside of your shadow. But none of that has a _damn_ thing to do with love.”

“You are perfect,” I said to her, feeling her go still more than seeing it, as the fire had long since burned low. “Do you understand what I mean when I say that? I have _death_ surging through my veins. My very flesh is poison. If I were to die alone in the wildness, the vultures wouldn’t feed on my body. If a wolf was desperate enough, he would be _blighted_. I have nothing to offer you but heartbreak.”

“I know,” she said. The sadness in her voice was devastating.

“What possible good can I do you by telling you I still love you? That the greatest blessing in my life was that I was lucky enough to fall in love not once but _twice_ , once to my equal and once to my dearest friend? This distance is not love, Lana, you and I both know that. It is the poison I drank before I knew you existed, that I would drink again even if I knew how it would all turn out. Do I have regrets? Of course I do. But they aren’t of my actions, they are of the options I didn’t have.”

“Are you happy, Moira?”

“I am terrified,” I answered her honestly. “I can feel the time slipping away from me, and my task is not yet done. I feel like Wynne, though I’m half the age she was when I knew her. If I could escape this fate, the things I would have left in my life are all things that I am happy with. Alistair, and Denerim, and Fergus’ new family, and the opportunities I still have, to travel and swing a sword. I am happy, in pieces. But I challenge anybody to be _happy_ when there’s a hole in the sky and you’re expected to martyr yourself in the Deep Roads.”

We were silent again, then. I helped Leliana take the rolled tent off her horse and quickly strung it up near mine, rolling out her bedroll and pulling flat stones out of the fire to help keep us warm at night.

We never touched.

When I woke in the morning, just before dawn, she was gone. She left no sign she had even been there, but for the cold-runed provisions and a note that was tucked into the lacing of my boot.

 

 _All you ever need do is ask_.

 

I folded it carefully into what papers I had with me; a letter from Alistair bidding me to keep safe, copies of the Warden treaties that I feared to travel without, the first letter from Fergus wherein he actually sounded happy.

Her memory seemed to cling to the ravine.

It was three days before I could bring myself to leave


	2. Wife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Corresponds with Chapter 14 of In the Hands of a Thief (Homecoming)  
> Is similarly NSFW as the chapter it mirrors

Evelyn was at my shoulder on the deck as we sailed into Denerim. How long had I been gone? A year? Two? The days melted into one another and all that mattered was that I was, finally, coming home.

“He’s on the docks,” I told her, the second I realized what I was feeling.

“You see him?” she asked, and I could see her crane her neck out of the corner of my eye.

“Feel him,” I explained. “There’s a Warden on the docks. Haven’t felt a Warden since we got onto the road north of Vol Dorma. Felt darkspawn a couple of times – when we got close to shore, especially in the ‘Marches. Wardens feel different. And I can only imagine one Warden who would come down to the docks to meet a Rivaini ship flying an Inquisition flag.”

She laughed her agreement. “Forgot about that bit. Pretty obvious who we are.”

It was a shame, really, that I couldn’t tell one Warden from another. The presence that was growing in my tainted senses at the same rate as the city was growing in my vision was simply a Warden. I couldn’t tell how long he’d been a Warden, how spread the taint was in his system, whether he was male or human or qunari. But I didn’t need the blighted blood I’d swallowed a decade before in the now-desolate ruin of Ostagar to tell me the Warden on the docks was my husband.

I spotted him in the crowd as soon as individuals were distinguishable, the drop of blood from the archdemon that swirled through his system lighting him up like a beacon. His eyes were glued to me, and I knew it didn’t matter if he’d heard word of my homecoming or not. Just as I knew he was on the docks, he knew I was on this ship.

I watched him judge the distance, quickly look around and settle on a better spot, and he crossed to a crate and then leapt easily to the top of a piling. We glided into port, and as the ropes were thrown and ship slowed, he jumped up to the rail and over, and I only had an instant to register the pure joy on his face before I was in his arms.

“Blessed Maker, I feared you were never coming back, everything is worse when you’re away, there was no word for so long I started to envision the worst, but you’re home, you’re home,” the words poured out of him. Everything I had wanted to write in the intervening months was pushed out of my mouth by the rising lump in my throat. “I am so sorry I left you alone for so long, my nights were desolate without you, you were my anchor in the darkness and I knew if I just held on I could follow that line back home. I’m home.”

He heard the word from my mouth and it cut off his own litany; he pulled back in my arms to _look_ at me, as if willing himself to believe I was real. It was always amazing to me, how much this man’s faith and devotion warmed me, how much better the world was when he was beside me. “I have news,” I said, because everything else fell short.

“I don’t care,” he said. “You’re home. You’re _home_.”

“I’m home,” I agreed, and then we were dancing across the deck, the steps I had taught him for the balls held after our wedding, after our coronation. He had learned so much since then, but this… this is always what we fell back on, the memory of hours spent laughing as he lamented never being able to dance with his wife. We were kissing and then we were dancing and then we were kissing again, knowing it didn’t matter who could see us, there was never a reason to hide our love.

I heard Evelyn’s voice behind me, a surprised exclamation, but it wasn’t until our dance led us back to the rail that I saw her wrapped in the arms of a tall blond man. Alistair bumped us into them and they looked up as we laughed, and that was when I recognized his face. Of course, Evelyn would be in her husband’s arms, but I hadn’t seen Cullen since the night we rescued him from Kinloch, and the years had changed him.

We spoke briefly while Alistair cavorted across the deck with an adorably squealing Evelyn, the Inquisitor seeming like the closest thing to a little sister Alistair could have, and I’d only seen them together for a matter of seconds. Cullen was completely different than the angry young man I remembered, but I suppose seeing him as he’s being freed from torturous imprisonment and seeing him as he’s welcoming home his wife would cast a man in different lights. He seemed calmer, more at peace; I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that was Evelyn’s influence. She brought out the best in everyone.

Even me.

I felt like I hadn’t stopped smiling since I met her, but now, as I watched Alistair express his joy by acting the part of a royal fool across the ship, my jaw ached from it. Evelyn had asked me, one night on deck, if I had found peace, and in this moment it was possible to believe I had.

The carriage ride was pure bliss, with his body heat radiating against my side, his hands clasped in mine. Dorian and Varric were completely at ease, despite being single men bookended by reunited spouses. Evelyn seemed to be trying to bury herself in Cullen’s shoulder, and it was a side to her I didn’t anticipate. She had given me so much to think about on our journey that it was impossible for me to disregard her actions now, and I found myself studying her as we talked to Varric about his books.

She was strong; as strong as me, as strong as Leliana, as strong as any one I knew. She believed it was a front, that inside she was a coward who simply didn’t allow herself to act on her fears. I had no doubt those fears were real, but I couldn’t imagine her ever crying craven.

It seemed more likely that she had turned her fear into a font for her strength, and she needed this man to support her when the font ran dry.

I couldn’t imagine what the world must be like to her, to be afraid of everyone and everything in it. That she saw the best in everyone was likely just another facet of her fight against fear: she probably saw the worst in everyone, counted every way they could possibly hurt her, and then willingly focused on only the good. Because otherwise, how could she ever trust? No, it was more surprisingly that she only collapsed into Cullen in relative privacy; a lesser woman would never leave her house, much less hang in the rigging of a pirate ship or free climb the walls of a fortress to steal for a relative stranger.

I was responsible, when we returned to the castle. I sat down with Evelyn, Dorian, and Varric and told my story to Cullen and Alistair. I skipped the bit about stealing Anders from Val Royeaux, unsure of exactly what Cullen’s temper was nowadays. Evelyn could tell him herself, if she even realized it was bypassed. Given her borderline hysteria when the truth about Fiona came out, I had renewed faith in my judgment for when to deliver news.

When Evelyn and I worked out the best way to move forward with the proposed cure was by Alistair and I travelling to Skyhold, I saw ten years melt from his face. He looked like nothing more than the young man I met in Ostagar, sassing a mage and hanging on every word Duncan said. Travelling again, him and I on the road, lit him up like a return to childhood, and I never loved him more than I did in that instant.

I couldn’t get us out of the room fast enough. I did have to talk to him about the things I couldn’t tell Evelyn and Cullen… Anders, and ser Cannic, and the machinations of the First Warden. There were things that happened at Weisshaupt that led me to the conclusion that theft was my only option, and those were the things for Alistair’s ears alone. That, and my meeting with the First Warden when I arrived had included the information a Commander usually gets years earlier than I had, since I was raised to Commander only a year after my Joining. Leading the war against a Blight does that for you. Alistair was still technically my senior Warden (although I was his Commander), and the information I’d gleaned could be passed to him without arguably breaking any rules.

But the chorus of eye rolls I received as I made our excuses, immediately followed by a sea of amused faces, told me my _Warden business_ cover had been entirely unnecessary.

“Please tell me,” Alistair said as the door closed behind us and I was standing in our bedchamber for the first time in well over a year, “that you aren’t _actually_ going to make me listen to news from the First Warden right now.”

“No,” I said, working to keep a straight face as I laced my fingers through his hair. “And I sincerely hope you’re caught up on rest, because _somebody_ isn’t sleeping tonight. I’ll give you two guesses on who.”

I worked the buttons of his coat open as another face-splitting grin crossed his features. “Cullen?”

I felt my lip twitch, the smile almost breaking through. “While that is likely _incredibly_ accurate, no, it was not who I was thinking of. Try again.”

I dragged the coat off his shoulders, and as my hands slid down his arms, he caught them in a iron grip. He stepped forward, a deliberate dance to the side of the bed, and as my back hit one of the thick posters, he dragged my hands over my head. There suddenly wasn’t enough air in the room.

“You,” he whispered against my throat, and my back arched as he pressed his body into mine.

“While I _desperately_ hope that is accurate, it is also _not_ who I was thinking of,” I managed to say without a single stutter.

“No?” he asked against my collarbone as he wrapped his left hand around both my wrists and his right drifted down my arm to the laces of my dress.

I shook my head and fought to keep my breathing steady. He could likely feel my heart racing, see my pulse throbbing in my throat, but the surrender always meant more when he had to work to earn it. His senses were as keen as my own, the taint giving us slightly better vision in the darkness, a stronger olfactory capability, and finer hearing. Lust has a way of making itself known to all of those senses; there was no way he didn’t know _exactly_ how much I missed him.

“No,” I said, holding on to the thread of conversation by my fingernails. “You have to know how disappointing your lack of foresight is. Truly, Alistair, I expected better of you.”

My dress was in a puddle on the floor, and I was momentarily baffled by the development, until I heard the dagger drop back into its sheath. _He sliced my dress in half_. My breath rattled through my throat, my skin suddenly too tight for my lungs to function.

“You…” he breathed against my throat, and I let myself grin at the quaver in his voice. “Saucy minx, you weren’t wearing anything under this.”

I pressed against him, arching my back and tilting my head forward to rub my cheek against his. “I missed you.”

Suddenly, he broke. I wasn’t expecting it, and I almost tumbled over with him when he let go of my wrists and crumpled against me. “Maker, Moira…” he gasped against me, suddenly shaking. “It was so long. I had almost given you up, started composing letters announcing you were officially missing. And then I was given the letter you sent Evelyn, and immediately after _that_ I got word from _you_. And then _nothing else_ , nothing else for _months_. Everything I have, I built with you. _I don’t want to do this without you_.”

I staggered a step back, under his weight, and we collapsed to the bed. We rolled so he was on his back, and I wrapped around him, pressing as much of my skin against him as I could manage.

“You know that’s why I went,” I said against his throat, trying to steady the shaking of my hands as I slowly unlaced his shirt and pants. “It’s affecting me more than you, my knee…” He hadn’t noticed yet, but he would. It was just a discoloration, for now, but I had seen it at Weisshaupt, knew what it grew into, watched a group of Wardens leave for Kal Sharok to follow their Calling. “You did the right thing by sending Evelyn. She will move mountains to help us. We will beat this, we will find peace. I believe in her, I believe in us.”

I tugged his shirt up and he sat up to let me pull it off, and then his hands were in my hair and we rolled, dragging the last of his clothes off with feet and hands and desperation. His skin on mine was a balm against suffering, the cure for all ailments. We laid on the neatly made bed, his fingers in my hair, my hands rubbing patterns in his back, faces inches from each other. I breathed in the air from his lungs, and he searched through my eyes as if there was something he yet needed to see, some proof of existence yet hidden.

“I love you,” I whispered, and I could feel him smile with his entire body. “I love you as I have loved no other person, ever in my life. Even if you’ve never allowed yourself to believe it. You have been my brother in arms, my trainer, my teacher, my confidante, my greatest supporter, my King. You believed in me when you barely even knew me, you gave me the strength to lead us here.”

I rolled him away from me, onto his stomach, his arms cradling his head. “And we are _not_ ,” I continued, trying to lighten the mood, “going to have some weepy sack session my first night home. We’re doing this the right way, the way we both have been imagining for _months_.”

I started to rub the tension out of his shoulders as he laughed. I worked my way down his body until my hands ached, and as I got to his feet he gently rolled over and began to rub my heels to return the favor. He worked his way up my body, ending with my back and neck. He ran his fingers through my hair and I turned to him, wrapping myself around him.

“Welcome home,” he whispered against my lips.

He said it again with his hands, tracing the lines of my body like it was his favorite story, the book he’d read a thousand times until he knew every word by heart. I watched him, how he smiled right before his fingers hit a spot he knew would make me twitch or arch or moan. How his brow furrowed when he found a new scar or noticed the mottled skin on my knee, committing the change to his eager memory. How serious his face became as he bent to put his lips to my skin.

I watched him, as his lips drew lines down my abdomen to my navel. As he traced the edges of my hair with calloused fingertips. As he eased between my knees and kissed a slowly shrinking spiral across the inside of my thighs. But when his tongue slid into me, my eyes closed and I arched up, and all I could watch were the explosions of light in the darkness inside my eyelids.

The stories are always written about young love. _The Tale of the Champion_ had Hawke and Fenris, Varric was surely writing about Evelyn and Cullen; the legends are all about falling in love. Nobody seems to want to hear about _staying_ in love.

His hands on me, his mouth on my skin, the hot certainty that he knew _exactly_  what he was doing; this was what drove me when I was far from home, this was what made the long trip voyage so rewarding.

We moved as one, the time I’d been away not enough to dull the muscle memory of many long years of love before.

He could feel when I was getting close, and stopped, knowing I preferred to finish _with_ him. I pulled him up to lay on my chest, and he listened to my heart while he traced designs across my skin.

I pulled the blankets down and we slid into the chilled sheets together, wrapping limbs around each other for warmth. I canted my hips and pulled him into me, feeling his hips glide into place against mine and our bodies locked together. I held him there, his breath harsh against my ear, and let us both revel in sheer gratitude for a moment. We were alive. We were together. _I was home_.

He drew me over the edge with him, a blessed eternity later. His breath grew harsher and faster, and his arms wrapped around me, pressing our chests together. “Maker’s breath, Moira. _Moira_.” I was the key to his release, my name was the prayer at his lips, and it pulled me into the abyss. For one perfect instant, there was no sound – no Calling, no Wardens, no breath and no castle slowly succumbing to time around us – just his voice and his arms and our bodies in sync.

“I love you,” he said next, the first time I’d heard it since I’d been home. He hated the words, called them a shallow reflection of the truth. They exploded out of him, the door opening on a long-sealed cave, new air sucking in to replace the staleness of _waiting_. “Its not enough, never enough, not even close, but they're the only words I have.”

“I know,” I whisper, holding him close. “I know what you mean when you say it. I love you, Alistair.”

“I love you,” he whispers against my lips.

“I know.”


	3. Oath Breaker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter runs concurrently with Chapter 23 of In the Hands of a Thief (For What Ails You) and a bit into Chapter 24 (Forgiveness and Forgetting).

It is her hands I feel first.

I know I’m being held by Evelyn. I know Anders is hovering somewhere near my head, that Dorian has his place – his perpetual place – at Evelyn’s back. I know I’m on the floor, I know I feel as weak as a newborn. It is so fitting that my time as a warden would be bookended by the two most painful experiences of my life that I almost don’t mind.

But the first thing I’m aware of – as clearly as I feel the pain and the sudden deathly silence in my thoughts – is Leliana’s hands on me. Her hands are finely boned – musician’s fingers – and ice cold. She was meant for warmer climates, my Nightingale. She’s turning my face out of Evelyn’s shoulder and I can feel the fear in her touch like I could never feel the darkspawn.

And I am in agony – pure fire in my veins, in every ounce of my flesh – and I say something angry and laced with profanity to Evelyn and she _laughs_. And there is _joy_ in her voice like I have never heard.

And my knee is suddenly pink and healthy instead of dead and brown, and Evelyn’s eyes are full of tears and _Leliana is holding me_ and for the first time, ever, it is not a _complete fucking disgrace_. The flesh of my body isn’t diseased, it isn’t a visible hourglass, counting the limited minutes before my inevitable martyrdom. For the first time, I am everything I always thought she was. I was leaning against her, mirror images to Evelyn limply laying against Dorian, and Anders is declaring me clean. _Clean_ like him, like I could have told him if only I had attention to spare for anything but finally being worthy of her touch.

The door was kicked open and Alistair exploded into the room, come to defend or avenge me, and for the first time _I didn’t feel him coming_. Anyone could have been behind that door, and I had no more knowledge than anyone else. I was-

“Free,” I said, to tell him what had happened to the diseased being in the undercroft. “She was a Warden no more.”

He moved in slow motion down the stairs. He hovered over me, hands as distant from my skin as Anders’ had been.

And I knew. _Knew_. Knew every ounce of pain she had ever felt, when I let the evil in my blood keep my skin from hers. The look in his eyes was the look she had seen in mine. The _distance_ broke my heart once for us each; for Lana’s past, for my present, for Alistair’s immediate future.

When he asked Evelyn when it could be his turn, when could he be cured, it was as a broken man. A widower.

And if I hadn’t already loved her, loved her like I loved Fergus, nearly as deeply as I loved Alistair or Lana or life itself, the next words out of Evelyn’s mouth would have driven me to grovel at her feet. “I am well enough to do it again,” she said, and she would never be anything less than my personal savior, my Herald.

Leliana – Lana, my Lana – helped me to my feet, but I was so light I could have flown. Cullen helped me to sit at the top of the stairs and I remembered, vaguely, that he wasn’t supposed to be there.

My eyes sought Alistair and I found his gaze glued to me, the distance and desperation palpable. The world erupted into chaos around us, but all I could see was Alistair, bravely awaiting his fate, willing to do anything to rejoin me. The brooch was on me – that pinpoint of evil that was the cause and the cure, the treatment and the disease – and I struggled to get it off. Dagna took it from me while Evelyn got Cullen out of the room and Anders healed something that was apparently hurting Evelyn but still, all I had eyes for was Alistair.

I swore to follow him into the Deep Roads, had his Calling come before mine. When the taint took over my body faster than it had his, he made the same promise. When the Blight had ended and he’d agreed to have me at his side, my name and our achievements supporting his claim to the throne, we’d vowed to live our life together until the bitter end.

Sitting across the room from him, safe in Leliana’s arms, I had broken my vow.

And he was waiting, desperately, for the opportunity to break his.

And Evelyn was taking _forever_ and I didn’t know why because I couldn’t look away, couldn’t look anywhere at him. He was drowning and I was his lifeline. I had vanished from his senses; he could only verify my continued existence with his eyes.

Evelyn must have fixed whatever was wrong, because the green of her hand flared to life and she was calling for healing – _he’s going to need you, Anders_ stopping my heart – and then he was a corpse toppling to the floor and my life was ended.

“Join us, brothers and sisters,” I heard the whispered words fall from my lips, felt Leliana tense around me. “Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us in the duty that _cannot be forsworn_.” I was walking down the stairs, Evelyn’s hand pulling me like a magnet to her side. Her smile swirled something like hope to light in my breast, but the fear was too damning. “And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten. And that one day, we shall join you.”

Evelyn’s arms were around my shoulders and I realized my eyes were closed. I forced them open, and looked down at the ruined form of my chosen companion of the last decade.

He was resting peacefully on the floor, propped carefully in Dagna’s featherbed, looking like he was merely asleep.

And then I saw that he was _breathing_ and he _was merely asleep_ and my world shifted all over again.

_He’s alive, He’s alive, He’s alive_

Every hope and dream we’d never dared entertain flared to life before me.

Growing old together. Seeing him with grey in his hair. Children. _Grandchildren_. Stepping down peacefully, relinquishing the throne when there was yet enough life left to watch our legacy come into its own. I had to hear someone crying before I realized it was me. The room was spinning and I laid down on the bed next to Alistair, listened to his breath, and allowed myself to hope. Fierce, desperate, vivid hope.

Armored men came into the room and I realized, finally, that Evelyn and the two mages were gone. Dagna had a tense look on her face, and Leliana was directing the soldiers – mercenaries? – to carry Alistair, featherbed and all, through a hidden passage into the tower where we had been given rooms. Leliana’s arms were around me, and I somehow staggered behind them, doing my best to ignore the way it felt like a funeral procession, a widow trailing the pallbearers.

They transferred him into the bed we shared – _our bed_ , if not the one we were familiar with in Denerim – and I laid myself beside him, watching his chest rise and fall.

People were talking, voices circling around me like dust motes in sunshine; I couldn’t catch them. He was alive – alive – and we were both free.

Leliana’s voice at the door, the guttural reply of a qunari, ghosted past me and were lost.

But then her hands – her permanently chilled hands – were on my face, in my hair, and I drew myself out of the fog to look at her.

“Cullen is alright,” she said, and that should have meant something, I knew. I could only frown and nod.

“Anders is coming up to check on Alistair, as soon as he gets Evelyn to her room. Everything will be alright. You need to rest. Give yourself permission to sleep, and trust us to watch over him.”

“Stay,” I said, summoning the strength to put my hand on her wrist, wrapping my fingers around with what little energy I had left. _Touching her_ like I hadn’t let myself do in years. “Please. _Please_. Lana.”

Her hand was on my cheek, brushing the hair out of my face, her smile swimming into focus somewhere past my ability to reason. “Of course, Moira. My love. I will watch over your sleep.”

A stone tied to my ankles would not have sunk me into the Waking sea as quickly as those words drew me into sleep.


	4. Beloved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overlaps with Chapter 25 of In the Hands of a Thief (Awakening)

I was awake when he swam into consciousness. His eyes met mine and he smiled, that sweet boyish smile I’d seen for the first time on the road to Redcliffe after he’d given me a well-worn rose. He wrapped his arms around me and dragged me against his chest, tucking his chin against my hair and sighing before drifting straight back to sleep. Anders told me it had been about eight hours, but since Alistair had woken up, the worst was past.

The mage finally left then, making his way back to the tavern where Cabot had promised him a place to sleep – Sera’s old room, somebody said, although it meant nothing to me.

But Leliana stayed.

It was easy to forget I needed rest almost as badly as Alistair did, that I had lived through the same _procedure_ he had. I slept like the dead for six hours initially, the silent dreamless sleep a warden prays for but never gets. I sat up, awake, watching him and vainly fighting to hold conversation with Anders and Lana until, blessedly, Alistair woke up. Relief drove me back under for another four. I awoke to the darkness of deep night, to Lana sleeping sitting up, her back against the door to our bedchamber. Anyone who tried to enter would wake her, but if I woke I wouldn’t feel guilt from keeping her from sleep.

Because of course, Leliana thinks of everything.

I woke again, for the last time, some two hours before dawn. I could hear the keep starting to stir to life around us, the kitchen staff working the ponderous ovens, vibrating the stones of the tower our rooms were in. The Guard was changing outside, and the sounds of reports and role calls carried weakly through the open window. Leliana was awake, and sitting in the chaise near the fire.

“I need to leave you for awhile, to return to my work,” she said softly as I gently worked my way out of Alistair’s embrace and eased out of bed.

“I completely understand,” I said once I had crossed the room to her. “You have already done so much, and I’m sure yesterday was hard on you. It could not have been easy to watch.”

The rose from the chaise and wrapped her arms around me in one smooth moment. “I almost feel like I have you back.”

I returned the gesture, clasping her tightly against me. “You do.”

For an instant, every muscle in her body clenched. She eased back away from me.

“Moira…”

“A lot happened yesterday, Leliana. Alistair and I… have a lot to talk about. Succession and resignation from the wardens and the public relations nightmare we have rather selfishly caused. But so much of what transpired had nothing at all to do with politics. I can’t make you any promises until he’s better and we can come to grips with …everything. But don’t disappear. Please.”

She held me at arms length, but she _held me_ there, so the distance mattered not. Her hands on my shoulders were still a miraculous change from the _isolation_ I had forced us into for so long.

“Alistair met you the day before your Joining,” she said, taking her time and choosing her words carefully. “I met you weeks later, after Ostagar fell, after you had been rescued by Flemeth, after you and Alistair had been travelling through the Wilds with Morrigan. You were very much a warden when I forced myself into your party in Lothering, the Lone Wardens. You were willing to lie to yourself then, to allow us to pretend we could make something that might last. It would be… unfair… to both of us if we were to fall into the same trap. I will not begrudge you the time to be sure you understand what you have to offer, what your life will allow. But you must allow me the same.”

I nodded. We were older now, our responsibilities myriad and largely unyielding. All I could ever ask for was a chance for discourse, a willingness to lay all the cards on the table.

She leaned forward, chastely kissed my cheek, and I found myself briefly clasping her hands in my own before she withdrew. Things felt _open_ in a way I was completely unaccustomed to, and it was not at all a bad sensation.

“You know,” she said, pausing at the door, “whoever you were before you a warden is a woman I never met. If you’re to become her again…? I would like the chance to get to know her.”

“I would like for you to get the chance to help determine who she is,” I said, perhaps a bit bolder than I should.

She knew it was more than I could promise, and her shoulders bounced with a silent laugh. “Your intentions are noted, then, if their plausibility is not yet determined.”

“Shoo,” I said, letting my own laugh be audible in the heavy morning air.

The door closed gently behind her, but didn’t stay that way for long. I was washed and reorganized – our clothes having been scattered in exhaustion the night before – and contemplating whether I was interested in breakfast when a soft knock drew me to the door.

Evelyn – painfully adorably in plaidweave pajamas and sleep-mussed hair – leaned wearily against my doorframe, inquiring after my husband.

There was too much to tell her, the words bubbling up my throat and interrupting each other before any could reach my lips.

_Thank you._

_As much as I loved Oriana, once upon a time, you are the closest thing I have ever had to a sister._

_I can never repay you._

_You’ve saved my life, my husband’s life, the future of our country, and given me a fighting chance to become a mother._

_I can_ never _repay you_.

Instead, I told her of Ander’s instructions – leaving out how Leliana had stayed the night to help me give Alistair his hourly elfroot potion – and how Alistair had woken briefly the evening prior. Alistair woke up almost immediately upon hearing Evelyn’s voice, and I was tempted to tell her how we both considered her family. How she was the sister he’d always looked for in Goldanna.

Instead, she and I helped Alistair up to the commode and then mocked him relentlessly until he was back in bed.

We stepped back into the sitting room, giving him the chance to go back to sleep, and I came close – so perilously close – to telling her about Leliana, about how everything in my life had changed when I’d found myself on the floor of the undercroft the day before. Somehow the conversation shifted to Evelyn urging me to immediately resume my attempts at getting pregnant – and only Alistair’s stupid determination to be mobile side tracked our conversation.

Evelyn left, laughing, as I rounded on my truant husband to get back into bed.

“I have been in bed for the better part of a day. I’m going to start to atrophy if I don’t move.” He sniffed, unrepentant. “Go with Evelyn if I interrupted your conversation, the door frame is plenty supportive enough.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s gone now, she can’t hear you. You can drop the act.”

“Act?” His voice rose, wounded. “For once I was being completely-“

I ducked and dropped a shoulder into his abdomen, swinging him over my shoulder. It was a brutal miscalculation; I was far weaker that I was before, whether a permanent change or a temporary set back I was unsure. I staggered under his weight, and he immediately knew it.

“Moira!” His voice was sharp. “Put me _down_ , you’re in no condition-“

I staggered a step to the right, and his feet swept the top of the sideboard clear, goblets and utensils and whatnots tumbling to the floor. Nothing seemed broken, but suddenly I was laughing and I couldn’t stop.

“Put me down. Put me down. Put me _down_ ,” he chanted. He reminded me so much of Evelyn as he danced her across the deck of Isabela’s ship in Denerim that I only laughed harder, and managed to take three more steps towards the bed before collapsing onto the floor.

“Maker’s breath, woman, have you lost your mind?” He rolled free of my grasp and crawled around to peer down at me. I could hear my laughter becoming hysterical, but did nothing to rein it in. Alistair gathered me weakly off the floor and held me to his chest. “For the love of- Moira, you must have lost a stone of weight or more. If dredging the taint from me diminished my blood volume, cleansing you of it probably stripped little bits out of everything. Your bones, your muscles, your heart and lungs… you need as much recovery as I do.”

I nodded, felt the laughter slowly come under control. This was what we needed to talk about, after all.

“Everything is changed,” I said, fighting to temper my emotions. “Everything… you, me, the fucking _light_ looks different.”

“Shh,” He said, and I realized he was rocking back and forth. “Not now. Not like this.”

“No,” I tried to pull away, but suddenly he was stronger than me, his arms iron bands I couldn’t escape from. Neither one of us had the fortitude to waste in a struggle, so I relaxed into his grip physically if not mentally. “No, this needs to happen now.”

“Why?”

“Because I have never known you when _you_ weren’t a warden.”

He fell still then. All anyone wanted to talk about was me, my ability to carry a child, my responsibilities pre- and post-Joining. No one had said word _one_ about Alistair.

“You were a warden when I walked into Ostagar. You were _my senior warden_ starting the day after I Joined, the only person who had _any_ idea what a mess my life had become. The wardens saved you from the chantry, from the templars, from the relatively loveless life you had led. And you just walked away from it, turned your back on it all. I know you have no love for the throne. I have to know-“

“Did I give it up for you? Andraste’s teeth, Moira, _yes_. A thousand times, yes. Did I let Evelyn strip the blight from my blood so that I could have a life with you? So that I could grow old with you? So that I would have the _hope_ of seeing my features on a child from your body? Yes. And I would do everything all over again, exactly the same, just so I could end up in this ridiculous moment with you, half naked on the floor of a guest room in the Keep of the bloody Inquisition, in a _heartbeat_.”

“I have never wanted you to give up anything for me.”

“I have always been willing to give up _everything_ for you.”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Moira,” he eased me out of his arms, so that I was sitting roughly in his lap, cross-legged between his knees. “Tell me why you wanted to leave the wardens.”

“I want your children,” I answered immediately, honestly. “I want to grow old and grey with you. I want to avoid a war of succession in Ferelden. I want to hold our grandchildren. I don’t want to suicide in the Deep Roads, don’t want to kill myself when there was so obviously another way. I don’t want to continually waste lives, I want to change the wardens so the knowledge of the senior wardens isn’t continually lost to the Deep Roads, to mindless martyrdom. And…”

My throat stuck.

“And…?” he prompted.

I swallowed twice, couldn’t get the words out.

“And because it has been physically painful for you, for the last decade, to touch Leliana.”

My eyes filled with tears, welled over, and he crushed me to his chest again.

“When I came into the undercroft yesterday,” he said, his own voice broken, “when I couldn’t sense you anymore, when you _vanished_   and my life was suddenly and inexplicably over… I opened that door not knowing what to expect. And there you were, smiling, whole and hale. In her arms, like you haven’t been since the night in camp outside the Brecilian forest, when the archdemon found us and you pushed her away. I could not bring myself to touch you. I could _feel_  the taint in me, feel it swirling through my veins, just as I could feel it _missing_   from you. I could not _bear_ the thought of that poison anywhere near your perfect skin.”

He shifted us, then, to try to look me in the eye, but the world was a blur. “I understood you then, like I have never understood you before. In that moment, I had lost you. I knew I would never touch you again while I was still a warden, regardless of whether your feelings for me were unchanged. I couldn’t, could not dream of it. My life as I knew it was over until Evelyn could do for me what she’d done for you.”

“Moira,” he said my name like it hurt him. “The day I lose you is the day I die.”

I threw my arms around his neck. “I love you,” I gasped. “I have _always_  loved you. I _will_ always love you.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“Alistair, _I love her too_.”

“I know. Moira, I know.”

“The choice was so _easy_ then. The darkspawn made it for me, and-“

“I’m not going to ask you to choose.”

I tried to gasp and only managed a very loud and unladylike sniffle. My lord husband, very unchivalrously, laughed.

“You are my _wife_ , my _Queen_ , and I would very much like to revisit the idea of you being the mother of my children. With all haste. But you are not my _property_ and I trust you implicitly. For the record, I am not threatened by Leliana. Nor would I be jealous if you two restored your affections. I know you, I know her… you are both too bound up in responsibilities and obligations, and if I don’t force the issue you won’t have a reason to run.”

“This is too much for me to ask,” I said, finally finding my voice. “You shouldn’t have to share.”

“Moira, I have _always_ had to share. You never stopped loving her.”

It was true – true enough to hurt. “I have wronged you for years, then.”

He laughed, then. _Laughed at me_ , and I was offended enough to stop crying. “Yes, let me tell you how wronged I have been. Like that night in the Redcliffe library. Or the surprise trip I made to Amaranthine to visit you. Or the night I got back from Seheron. Or all the times you _slept with only me_ in the last decade. Oh, I have been _so_ wronged.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I came to the understanding a very long time ago that I was the only person in Thedas who only loved one person. I have no family, no _memories_ of family. I have _you_. You had your parents, Fergus, your nieces and nephews, and Leliana in your heart long before it was mine. Someday, I hope, another piece of your heart will be stolen by our child. On that day I might finally know what it’s like to love two people at the same time. As it stands, your closest competition is the squealing little demon who just giggled her way out of our room, and Leliana herself; both of those are purely plutonic loves, I assure you.”

“I guess I don’t understand,” I said. “All I feel right now is guilt. Crushing, terrible guilt. Like I’ve never been what you needed.”

He sighed, and settled me closer against him. “Are you going to stop loving me if you fall into bed with Leliana?”

“What?” I choked. “No. _No._ How could you even-“

“Alright then. So my concern is what?”

I closed my jaw with an audible click, understanding his point. “You’re saying nothing changes.”

“That’s exactly what I am saying. If you actually let yourself _touch_ the woman, you’re not going to love her any more or any less than you have _always_ loved her. And I have lived with that knowledge quite happily for the last ten years. It doesn’t bother me any more now than it ever has. Leliana and I used to talk about this in camp, you know, back before I knew what I wanted, before I understood how badly I needed you. Neither of us could ever begrudge the other our love for you. I don’t understand why _more_ people aren’t madly in love with you, honestly.”

I felt the laugh build behind my teeth, and I repressed it. “Don’t joke.”

“I’m not! I also know how badly you want a family. You dress it up as wanting to avoid a civil war, and to clarify the succession, but I see the way you look at Fergus’ children. I know you want your own. And unless I am _greatly_ deceived, that’s not something Leliana can give you.”

I let the laugh go, this time, and I felt him relax, could hear the smile in his voice.

“If I have something to worry about, if you ever want to leave me for good, I trust you’ll tell me in advance.”

The mere suggestion was absurd. I was laughing again, openly, and I tilted my head up to look into his face. “You know damn well I want nothing more than to be with you.”

“Then why are we even having this conversation?”

“Because I am too exhausted to do to you what I would prefer to be doing.”

“Wow, and suddenly I am a cured man.” He got easily to his feet and pulled me up behind him, and all I could do was laugh.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said with a leer. “Since you watched over me all night, and we’re both burned down to nubs, if you can get yourself into bed I can take care of the rest.”

I detoured to the door to throw the bolt and then made my way to our bed with alacrity, leaving a trail of clothes behind me. “You are a gentleman and a scholar,” I said as he pulled me into the sheets and rolled onto me.

“I am,” he agreed, surprisingly. He usually protested the title of _scholar_. “Or at least, I am for the foreseeable future.” His mouth was tracing my collarbone and his hands tracing their way down my ribs to the ridge of my hips. “As I’ve never made love to my wife without being a warden, this is an entirely new experience. I must study it properly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, man, this means I have two days to finish the next chapter if I want to keep up my schedule.  
> I have never posted something without having finished it before. The stress is killing me.


	5. Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happens concurrently with Chapter 25 of In the Hands of a Thief (Awakening)

My appetite was a quarter what it had been before – for food, at least. The taint wardens lived with sped up their metabolism; suddenly living without it forced Alistair and I to relearn everything about ourselves. I couldn’t see worth a damn in the dark anymore, although his eyes had held up better. His sense of smell was utterly worthless compared to mine. Both of us seemed to still have better than average hearing, although that could have been from years of living in danger on the road.

Food tasted different – better, for the most part, but different. I lost much of my tolerance for alcohol, which was a thoroughly embarrassing discovery I was sure Evelyn would never let me live down. Alistair had never been much of a drinker, so I vowed to never again drink more than him.

My skin was completely different, though – softer, thinner, more sensitive. The calluses on Alistair’s hands were suddenly noticeable when pressed against my skin, the texture of his lips more defined against mine. And the _sex_ …

For three days, we got up in the late morning to make our way to the council chamber for a few hours, have lunch with Evelyn and be seen by Anders, and otherwise spent the entire day in bed together. Food was brought and left in the sitting room at breakfast and dinner, and one of us would sneak out to fetch it and bring it back to bed. We would discuss how things tasted, how our preferences were different, and inevitably wind up twisted in the sheets again.

_His skin_ felt like nothing else I had ever imagined, softer even than my memory of Leliana’s. He was _warm_ in places I had never noticed before. The changes in sensation had repercussions I hadn’t considered possible.

“Oh reeeeally,” he said laughingly one morning, as mere minutes after he knelt before me and began to tease me with his tongue I was arched up and breathless, twisting out of his surprised grasp.

“That’s… never happened before,” I said, panting.

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

“Everything is just so _different_. I can feel what you’re doing more clearly. Every time you move it’s a surprise.”

“Do you think you have a few more of those in you?”

“Maker… I think I do. If you don’t mind…?”

“Are you kidding? Is it my birthday and no one thought to tell me?”

I tried to laugh but his lips were against me again, his tongue tracing out a story of sex that had every nerve ending singing. As it turned out, I had _six_ more climaxes in me.

“And I believe we have encountered our first problem,” he said, but the smile in his voice kept my fear in check.

“Hmmm?” I asked, face still buried in my pillow as I tried to figure out how to make my legs work.

“I am definitely still limited to _one_. You, however, seem to have no upper limit.”

“I don’t know…” I muttered. “I don’t think I could get off again if I wanted to.”

In response, he stroked a hand across my thigh, tracing the line where my glutes met my legs, one finger sliding into me and I arched my back and sucked in a breath uncontrollably. His chuckle made my heart pound. “Oh, I seriously doubt _that_ is the case.”

I tried to answer, but words weren’t working.

“It’s alright,” he said softly, laying down so close beside me that he was leaned against my back as he whispered in my ear. “I have a solution.”

“Hmmm?”

He was still tracing patterns against my skin, and I was utterly distracted by his fingers dancing across the small of my back.

“I’m quite confident Leliana is willing to help us determine if you have a maximum capacity.”

I felt my breath catch and he chuckled again. “Do you want me to ask her? Or will you?”

 

*

 

We ended up where we probably should have begun, the three of us sitting in a loose ring of chairs near a hearth with a pot of strong tea and no illusions of modesty. Somehow, Alistair took the lead in the conversation. I’d left him alone at the head of our kingdom enough times that it stood to reason he would learn how to command, but it still surprised me to see it for myself.

We had ten years of distance to sort through, and that much history wasn’t the work of an afternoon. Or four. We had been _former_ wardens for a week when Leliana and I finally hit the tipping point.

We were sitting together on the chaise by the fire, like we had been the day I arrived and Evelyn spent the afternoon searching her dreams for a missing elf. There was less than an inch of space between us, but it could have been a mile.

“I didn’t know how angry I was,” she said suddenly, an abrupt topic shift, “until Evelyn cured you. Until Alistair came into the undercroft and wouldn’t touch you. Until I saw how strongly that affected you, affected him. It was vindication, it was vengeance… you had held yourself back from me for _years_ and now you got to see how that felt.”

Alistair, sitting at the desk across the room, froze in the act of writing a letter – I suspected it was to Teagan, as he was a poor correspondent with everyone else he knew. I could see on his face that he was reliving the moment, as Lana and I were.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she continued, softer. “I wanted to taunt you, to revel in you getting a taste of your own medicine. I wanted to put a knife in Alistair, for subjecting you to that level of pain. I wanted to comfort you, to hold you as I wish someone had held me. And somewhere deep inside, I felt the tiniest sliver of hope, terrible selfish hope, that if he rejected you I could have you back. I hated it, hated myself for it, as soon as I saw it. So I merely held you, because I knew that this time you would let me, that I could have you in my arms and you would have no complaint.”

There was nothing I could say to that. Instead of trying to find words, I slowly – so she could see me coming, so she could react however she chose to – reached out and took her hand, lifting it from where it was clenched in a fist in her lap. Her fingers relaxed as I pulled on her wrist, forcing her to turn slightly towards me. I pressed her open palm to my chest, to the spot just left of center where my pulse beat loudest.

Slowly, so slowly, her other hand drifted up, and gently cupped my cheek. Her fingertips brushed my hair back, tucked a loose lock behind my ear.

With one palm still pressing her hand to my heart, I reached out to place my other hand on her shoulder and then let it drift down to her waist. “No complaint,” I echoed.

If my eyes had been able to stay open, I would have seen her coming. The next thing I felt was her lips on mine, her hand tangled in my hair, cupping my head and pulling me into her.

She was nothing I remembered. I had been a warden when I loved her, my skin thick and unfeeling. Her smell was fainter but her taste sweeter. Her lips were softer and her hands, her delicate icy hands, left traces of fire across my skin. Her hand rose from my chest, following the seaming of the bodice of my dress, to trace the skin just below my collar. Her knuckles brushed the lines of my jaw and goosebumps raced down my arms and spine.

A thousand heartbeats later – which might have only been seconds, with how my pulse raced – she leaned back and I fought to draw a shaky breath.

“Do you want me to leave?” Alistair asked from the desk, his voice pitched low and strangely neutral.

I opened my eyes, saw Leliana’s face impossibly close. Her shoulders were heaving with her own attempt to catch her breath, and I couldn’t help the smile. She was waiting for my opinion – but wasn’t she always? I tilted my chin, indicating it was her decision, and loved the crinkle at the corner of her eyes when she smiled back at me.

“Stay,” she said, sending my pulse through the roof again.

I risked a look at Alistair, saw him unmoved at the desk, letter largely forgotten, swirling a glass of wine and a thousand thoughts written plainly across his face. All of them were good. He tilted his glass to me in salute and ostensibly went back to his correspondence.

Leliana’s light laugh drew my attention. “Well, then,” she said, and took my face in her hands once more and pulled my lips into hers.

She had been wearing a swirling crimson and cloth-of-gold dress, not unlike the one Josephine wore the day Alistair and I had arrived at Skyhold. It looked fantastic against the swirling yellows and oranges of the rug beneath the chaise, heaped in a pile with the blue linen I had put on that morning.

I couldn’t get over her skin. As astonished as I had been in the difference I could feel in Alistair’s skin, Leliana’s was impossibly smooth; alabaster silk criss-crossed with the hatch marks of a life lived by the sword. There were dozens of new scars, and I had new empathy for Cullen’s mapping of Evelyn’s wounds. I found the ones I knew, the ones I had seen before or been present for the creation of, old friends who were eager to renew the acquaintance.

She was lying behind me when I finally made eye contact with Alistair again. Her left hand was tangled in my hair, her right hand snaked beneath my right thigh as I was laying half on my left side, half on my back against her. Her lips were tracing the lines of my ribs and the feel of her nipple being dragged against my back was the best kind of distraction. My eyes slid open lazily and were locked immediately onto Alistair’s, still seated at his desk, still maintaining a casual air with a slowly swirled glass of wine.

Rather than holding a quill, his right hand was clenched, white knuckled, on the arm of his chair.

Slowly, his mouth slid into a smile. There were too many emotions on his face to name, but the ones I saw were beautiful to behold: joy, acceptance, encouragement, love. So much love.

And not a small amount of desire.

Content, I shifted on the chaise so I was facing Leliana, so I could put my hands back on her, and suggested – not for the first time – that the bed would allow far more room. Leliana agreed, but – also not for the first time – we could not be bothered to stop for long enough to change locales.

By unspoken agreement, we took turns. I would hold her while she slowly recovered, reveling in the feel of her skin against mine. Gradually she would catch her breath and her fingers would trace flames onto my skin. She would run her hands and lips over me until I was breathless and sated, and then hold me against her while I slowly recovered. Eventually the recovery slipped into blissful sleep, my hand tangled in her hair to hold her ear against my chest, her arms wrapped around my waist like a promise.

I vaguely heard Alistair and Leliana speaking, the half-remembered recollection of a deep sleep. I woke in my own bed in the small hours before dawn, unconvinced the whole thing hadn’t been a dream.

Leliana was there beside me, though, her back pressed tight against my abdomen, our left hands entangled and pressed against her waist. The comforting heat behind me was Alistair, laying on his back, his right side pressed hard against me. I reached out behind me, finding his left hand and tugging on it. He woke enough to roll against me, tucking his hand into the space between my breasts with a happy hum. Leliana searched for my hand and I returned it to her grasp, and smiled to myself as she tucked my hand into the same spot I’d just put Alistair’s

An hour later the warmth against my belly disappeared, and I found myself reaching for her, immediately awake.

“Hush, my love,” she whispered, brushing her fingers through my hair. “I have work to attend to this morning, and you still have need of your sleep.”

“Stay,” I managed to murmur, and her breathy laugh was heaven to my ears.

“Someday, Love. Someday. Go back to sleep.”

Her voice held some mystical power over me, and I was helpless to fight her suggestion.

I woke an hour after dawn when I felt Alistair pull away from me and rise from our bed.

“Not you too,” I muttered. “Come back.”

He laughed, making a comment about needing the commode and I waved at him dismissively. He was back within minutes, sliding under the blankets and rolling me towards him.

“Are we talking now or later?” I asked, pressing my palms to his chest.

“I have very little to say,” he admitted happily. “Leliana and I had a brilliant chat while I put you to bed, and you already know how I feel about the arrangement.”

“Even now that you’ve seen it?”

He pulled me against his chest, and I wrapped my arms around him with a happy sigh. “ _Especially_ now that I’ve seen it,” he whispered against my ear.

My activities the night before did nothing to staunch my desire for Alistair’s body. He was quite happy to oblige, admitting that watching me climax without being able to touch me had been sweet torture. There was a letter from Leliana on the desk when we finally oozed out of bed some hours later, addressed to us both.

 

_I am sorry to flee so early, but there is always so much to do – I know you understand._

_Moira, my love: Alistair and I spoke last night and want you to know that everything is still quite well between us. I’m confident he will fill you in on the details of our conversation, but the underlying truth is we are completely willing to share you._

_Alistair: thank you for being such a dear friend. When next I am able to break away from my duties and seek your company, it is only fair for our roles to reverse. I hope to be as patient an observer as you._

_Lana_

 

“She wants to watch _us_?” I asked, my heart suddenly throwing itself against my ribs wildly. Alistair’s arms snaked around my waist and his answer was spoken against my neck, raising goosebumps to race down my arms.

“It is only fair, after all. If you could see your face you would understand the appeal.”

“You are both too good to me; this is more than I deserve,” I said weakly.

“It is going to get far better for you as Leliana and I work out how best to share you,” he answered. My only reply was in the tremble of my knees and the desperate pounding of my heart.


	6. Mother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My intention is never to write baby fic... but I think the story requires this one.

We rode into Denerim with an air of triumph: the King and Queen, united, with the Inquisition proudly behind them. We’d allowed the story to spread that we had made a formal alliance with the Inquisitor, and the two powers would work in close cooperation for the foreseeable future.

Cullen was happy to ride with the Inquisition troops as they entered the capital city, his presence completely eclipsed by Alistair and I being seen together, hand in hand on matching mounts.

Cullen was forced to wait around Denerim for nearly a week before the Landsmeet was held; Alistair and I were thrown immediately into work and he was left largely to his own devices. He refused the room he and Evelyn had been given before, settling into a smaller apartment down the hall.  We saw him for every meal and Alistair disappeared with him most evenings, letting the brunt of the catching up fall onto my shoulders.

After abandoning him to it for over a year, I couldn’t really complain.

The Landsmeet was a wild success: Arl Teagan from Redcliffe stood immediately to support the plan to give Cullen an Arling, especially as it was obviously an honorary title and would encompass largely unoccupied territory. There were a few other shifts in titles, with Gwaren (largely still in ruins after the Blight) being proposed to shift into an arling and Redcliffe being promoted into a teyrnir. The former was rejected and the latter promoted, with Teagan becoming Teyrn Guerrin. His wife, Kaitlyn, was nearly beside herself.

As Cullen wandered the room and was introduced to the Banns and Arls in attendance – which was most of them, since I was back and most desired to see me for themselves – Kaitlyn and Fergus’ wife Emmauld attached themselves to my side. Kaitlyn was heavy with child – her second, the first being a two year old boy who was the spitting image of his uncle Eamon.

“I need to ask you both some advice later,” I said, hiding my mouth behind a goblet of water. Fereldan politics were completely different than those of Orlais, but some habits were hard to break. There were no rumblings of rebellion within the Bannorn, and the three Teyrns were all dear friends of the crown; even my childlessness wasn’t a concern, when there were the children of Redcliffe and Highever to inherit. The time for ambition had not yet arrived.

They followed me into a “family only” salon that evening, and once I made it clear what my news was, the rest of the evening was spent receiving advice and determining when to break the news to different parties. Kaitlyn – who was still a month away from delivering but always planned for the worst – had the Redcliffe midwife travelling with her. After a short bit of plotting, she set herself to bring the woman with her when she called on me the following day.

“Too early to be sure,” the midwife asserted the next morning, after a rather frank discussion and an inspection that left no room for modesty. “No reason to think you’re not, though, aside from you being a bit old for your first. If knowing right now is important, a mage can tell in an instant.”

“Oh, I’ve had that check done. I just don’t have anybody here, and I don’t know how to go about…”

“Magda, my teacher, lives in Denerim. She’s been teasing retirement for years, but the woman’s seen it all and she would fall over herself for a chance to deliver another Theirin. She helped when good King Cailan was born, Maker keep him.”

“How can I reach out to her without anyone knowing?”

“I’ll send her in. No reason for her to come by for another month or three, but I’ll tell her where you think you are and she’ll show up on her own when the time is right. If you quicken before you hear from her, send for me, but I’ll be surprised if she isn’t here far more often than you want or need.”

I was hoping to have a physical confirmation above and beyond Cole’s assertions and my own instinct, but Cullen was set to leave in three days’ time and nothing would keep the man a moment longer. Given the news he was to receive when he returned to Skyhold, I wouldn’t dare try to delay him.

So the night before the new Arl of Honnleath was set to return to his home in the Frostback mountains, I arranged for a private dinner, just the three of us.

“I want to beg you to plan a return for far sooner than the next Landsmeet,” I told the former Templar during a lull in conversation between him and Alistair, the two men having grown impossibly close in the intervening time. “I am confident you will not, but perhaps I could attempt to persuade you?”

The Commander of the Inquisition leaned back in his chair with a grin. “It is not me you must convince, but my wife.”

“Very well, then. When you return to Skyhold, please tell your lovely wife that I would like for a visit from you more frequently than once a year. Alistair in particular will be eager for your company and advice.”

“Oh?” the king asked with a chuckle, angling towards me playfully. “And just what will I need advice on?”

I gently reached out to him, and he quickly took my hand in his own. “Cullen grew up with many siblings, my love, and is surely more comfortable around children than you. By this time next year, you are sure to have a hundred questions for him.”

Alistair’s face as he gradually worked out what I’d said was glorious to behold.

“No,” he breathed. “Already? So soon?”

Not trusting my voice, I merely nodded.

“And you’re sure?”

I had to shrug. “The midwife says it is too early to confirm, but Cole said… Cole _heard_ -“

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen suddenly said with a whooshing exhale. “You’re expecting? We’re to have an heir?”

And then Alistair had us both out of our chairs, dancing me across the floor and I was laughing, crying laughing, and completely helpless to make out the words tumbling out of him.

“You’re sure?” he breathed, spinning us to a halt, and I had to shake my head.

“I won’t believe until I see you holding it, I don’t think. But Cole could _hear_ it, which is good enough for me.”

“Wait, is that what he told you the morning we left? You’ve known for _two weeks_?”

I quickly cupped his face with my hands. “I met with a midwife. So much can go wrong, and it is still so early, I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case something went wrong.”

“Andraste’s toasted elbows, Moira,” he said, decidedly displeased with me. “We’re in this _together_. If you were to suffer the loss, I want to suffer it with you. It would have been terrible to find out it was even possible for you to be pregnant in the same breath I found out you’d lost a child.”

“I didn’t think of it that way,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I haven’t exactly done this before.”

He was laughing again, and I was forgiven and swept back into his arms.

Cullen was standing at a sideboard with the steward, who had been sent for a sparkling wine to celebrate. I was pointedly handed a glass of water, which I used to join the men in a toast.

“Is it too much to hope that I will be able to deliver this news to Evelyn?” Cullen asked.

I had to shake my head. “I told Cole to tell her. But you should absolutely let her know I’ve told you.”

 

_Moira,_

_My beloved husband arrived home today with the most wonderful news. Imagine his surprise when I told him precisely why we would be unable to come visit you before the next Landsmeet! Thank you kindly for your clever creation of that opportunity, although I must admit he is quite cross with you for knowing before him._

_I made the mistake of seeking a midwife. I say it was a mistake because the anger it inspired in Dorian and Anders. They said if I was set upon having a woman I could call Vivienne, but between them and the surgeon I would want for nothing. Also, Dorian might be the most excited of us all._

_Leliana is upset with us for not timing this better – she cannot decide where to be when we both come due, as she desperately wants to be at your side and is utterly convinced that she must be in Skyhold with me. If you don’t mind, I would like for us to come up with some menial task that sounds like a life-or-death emergency that I can use to send her to Denerim, if only so I don’t feel guilty about having her here._

_The only negative I can see to all of this is that it will be a minor eternity before I am able to see you again. Please keep yourself safe & well, and give my love to the ridiculous man you married. His last letter insisted I was an honorary Theirin, and I am certain he means to cause riots in the streets. I am writing him next, to talk him out of cradle-betrothing our children, fool man. You must have told him the second Cullen left, for him to have already drafted up the proposal and sent it to me._

_Write me soon. Skyhold is dreary without you, now that I’ve become accustomed to your company._

_Your Sister Evelyn_

_*_

_Your Most Revered Majesty, King Alistair Theirin of Ferelden,_

_You take this betrothal proposal and you shove it right up your ass._

_We all got to marry for love, and we are damn sure going to give the same luxury to our spawn._

_The wine you sent back with Cullen was lovely, thank you so much! I found the most exquisite cheese maker in a tiny town just west of Crestwood, and I’ve set him up in Haven. I’m sending along a wheel of his finest, I find it pairs spectacularly with the red you favor._

_My rooms smell endlessly of wet dog. I blame you._

_Please give your lovely wife a hug from me._

_The Herald of Andraste, Lady Inquisitor Evelyn Trevelyan Rutherford, Arlessa of Honnleath_

_(makes your one title look like a fucking joke, slacker)_

 

*

 

The skies had opened up, a brutal storm surging into Denerim from the Amaranthine ocean, when they arrived at the gates. No one knew who they were, of course – two travelers, heavily cloaked against the storm, apparently unarmed and unaccompanied. They made their way directly to the gates of the castle and immediately sought audience with Alistair.

That two women asked for him instead of me should have tipped me off.

They were allowed in to wait for him in an antechamber off the throne room, and when he was called away from our table at dinner to meet with them I was too preoccupied to wonder. Magda had practically moved into the nursery just down the hall from our apartments, and the woman was convinced I was in the last week of my pregnancy. Given the size I had attained, I hoped she was right.

Alistair returned quickly, with a broad smile on his face. On his heels-

“Lana!” I said, leveraging my bulk out of the upholstered armchair I favored nowadays.

“Maker’s breath, Moira, you look incredible,” she gushed, crossing the room to wrap me in a hug. I pulled her as close as I could.

“Incredibly large, you mean,” I laughed. Alistair scoffed from the door way.

“No, not at all. When you were seated I couldn’t tell you were carrying at all. And you didn’t gain a scrap of extra weight! Evelyn swelled up like a dead fish but I would die if you ever told her I said that.”

I waved for her to join us at the table before I realized there was another woman at the door with Alistair. “Who came with you, Leliana?” I asked, a bit belatedly.

“This is the Enchanter to the Divine, Lady Vivienne de Fer,” Alistair introduced easily.

“So very nice to meet you, Lady de Fer,” I said with as much grace as I could scrape together. “I am sorry I could not meet you under more proper arrangements.”

Vivienne – who I suddenly remembered from Evelyn and Varric’s tales aboard Isabela’s ship nearly a year before – seemed pleased with my answer. “My apologies for appearing in such an informal manner, your Majesty,” she said in a voice that was all silk and steel. “I am on an errand from the Divine.”

I snapped my head to Leliana, who put up a hand in a reassuring gesture. “It’s not what you think.”

“The Divine,” Madame de Fer said as she glided into the room, “has a vested interest in the Fereldan succession, and has asked me to appear here and ensure the health of the heir and his mother.”

“Her mother,” Alistair corrected her as he crossed the room. “Moira has been convinced it was a girl for months now.”

“And a daughter would be in line to inherit?” Vivienne casually clarified as she and Leliana took seats the steward hastily produced.

“Absolutely,” Alistair replied. “Moira’s namesake, my grandmother, was Queen in her own right. Only the chantry places restrictions on what gender may serve in what role.”

“Hopefully we have more than one,” I said quickly, sensing Alistair was very close to insulting the Orlesian mage. “Then we can pass the crown to whichever will best fill the role, regardless of birth order.”

“A girl would officially destroy your attempts at a betrothal with Baby Rutherford,” Leliana said carefully, which brought a smile out of Lady Vivienne.

“Evelyn had the baby?” I asked, finding myself gripping the edge of the table. “Is she well?”

“A girl, some five days past. Vivienne and I rode as quickly as we could to beat the news here, bless this storm for stopping the heralds in the Bannorn. She was an easy birth, what with three mages and a surgeon hovering over her mother. She is perfect and healthy and her father is madly in love.”

I shook my head. “No, Evelyn. Is _Evelyn_ well?”

“She is perfect,” Leliana said gently, sensing what all lay behind my question. “She sent me with a letter for you. I will have to dig it out of my packs later, as I buried it deep to keep it safe from the storm. She sends you all the love she can spare.”

“Oh, I’ll have to write her and discuss names,” I said, laughing to keep from crying. “It would be terrible for us to unwittingly copy one another.”

“No need,” Vivienne said easily. “The Inquisitor has decided to forego the convention of waiting six weeks to name the babe, and reasonably so. The apostate looking over them is a phenomenal healer, as much as it pains me to admit it, and will have no problem keeping a single child alive in such a safe and clean setting.”

“Cassandra,” Leliana said in response to my unspoken question. “Their daughter is named Cassandra in honor of Divine Victoria.”

Alistair let out a breath. “Well, no worries there. That isn’t even one of our options.”

Vivienne and Leliana followed me into my solar after dinner, Alistair studiously avoiding us in favor of his own sitting room. I felt badly until I remembered he’d likely settled into a comfortable routine in the more-than-year he lived here alone and I tripped around Thedas.

Vivienne had her hands on my face, then, the sudden chill of her skin all the warning I had that she was doing something magical. With an unconscious grace, she traced my arms down to where my hands lay limply atop the swell of my daughter. As Vivienne’s hands settled on the stretched skin of my abdomen, a tiny pair of feet started kicking against her palms.

Leliana leaned in, entranced, as Vivienne lifted her hands away and the kicks continued.

“They’re little feet! Look! You can see the shape of them and everything!”

Vivenne grunted, a surprisingly unladylike sound, and thrust Leliana out of the way with a hip. “Lay back, this is going to feel odd.”

I immediately tipped backwards on the chaise, Leliana quickly sitting down behind me to cradle my head.

“For the record,” I gasped out, never having enough breath when I was laying down on my back, “I met you a couple of hours ago, and I have zero reason to trust you.”

Madame de Fer lifted an elegant eyebrow. “And yet here you are, prone before me.”

“Leliana would not have brought you into my home if she didn’t trust you. And my husband trained as a Templar. I have no doubt you will be dead within seconds if Leliana gives me any indication she was coerced.”

They both stiffened. Vivienne gave me a quick nod of understanding, and then focused on my passenger.

“I am so sorry to put you in this position, Moira,” Leliana murmured from behind me. “I have worked so long with Vivienne that I honestly forgot you had not yet met her. She was one of the few mages who stayed in their Circle even after the Nevarran Accord was nullified. She was in Val Royeaux when you were visiting Skyhold.”

A spike of cold slowly descended through my skin, downward from Vivienne’s hand hovering over my navel.

“What are you doing?” I gritted.

“The cord is wrapped some three or four times about the neck and arm,” Vivienne responded easily. “I’m unwrapping it.”

The cold seemed to spiral through my abdomen, and my daughter began kicking wildly.

“Vivienne…” I started, pulling in my breath to call for Alistair. Better to apologize to the Divine than lose the child.

She pulled her hands away suddenly. “It is done, my dear. You will be fully capable to deliver this little beauty all on your own, now.”

“Beauty?” I asked, Leliana helping to push me upright.

“Your daughter, indeed. You have good instincts. She is perfection itself. Is your midwife near? It will not be long now.”

As if on command, an uncomfortable tightness clenched around my abdominal muscles.

“Did you put me into labor?”

“Of course not, my dear. You’ve been in the early stages for days. I merely sped you up a bit. You’ll thank me later.”

I detoured to Alistair’s sitting room, taking his hand and placing it against my abdomen so he could feel the contraction and the answering kick from within. “Madame de Fer said the cord was wrapped,” I told him, remembering my promise to share everything. “She unwrapped it, and said everything should go smoothly. She also said it will be _soon_.”

He jumped out of his chair. “How soon?”

“I’m going down to see Magda now, soon.”

He physically fought for self control, clenching his fists and taking several extended breaths. Maker, I loved this man.

“Alright,” he said slowly. “I will notify the household staff and get the kitchens to boiling water. I’ll put a runner outside Magda’s door. What else would you like for me to accomplish?”

I cupped a hand to his cheek. “Find the steward. Find rooms for Leliana and Vivienne. Leliana has a letter for me from Evelyn in her packs that I would love to have. I’ll send her to you.”

“No, you keep her,” he corrected me. “When I have done what I can, I will come join you. You can send Leliana to fetch the letter for you then, but either Lana or myself is going to be with you at all times from here out.”

Magda was properly gracious to Vivienne when they met, but the elderly midwife wasted no time directing the Orlesian mage right out of her rooms. I had warned her that Leliana might be present for the birth, and she was fully aware that Alistair intended to be with me for the duration, as unheard of as that might be.

She did a quick exam and determined I was quite progressed, and likely to deliver within the next day.

Whatever Vivienne did, that day was compressed to ten hours.

The sun was just rising, bright in a cold morning, when Magda pressed our daughter into Alistair’s arms. I was leaning heavily on Leliana, dazed but amused by the tears running down my neck that fell from her eyes.

“Eleanor,” Alistair breathed, and my mother’s name on his lips brought the tears I hadn’t thought to shed.

Leliana kissed me, then, hard and fast on the cheek, and slipped away to send ravens to Skyhold and Val Royeaux.

Alistair took her place, drawing me with him to the deeply cushioned couch. I sat down and took our daughter from him, and then as he sat down beside me we turned so I leaned heavily against him. She took readily to the breast as Magda murmured advice and encouragement, and then the midwife slowly vanished into the background.

“Eleanor,” Alistair whispered again.

It was almost like I could hear his heart grow to accommodate the ruddy angel in my arms.

“You should write to Evelyn,” I whispered, not looking away from little Eleanor. “Brag to her about how when you got a daughter you didn’t have to look like a snoufleur to do it, and _your_ daughter is going to be a Queen.”

“Later,” he breathed, although I could hear the laugh in his voice. “And I’ll be sure to tell her the snoufleur bit was your thought and not mine.”

Laughing softly, my head against his shoulder, suddenly a _family_ , it was impossible not to be awestruck at how far we’d come. This moment, this impossibly perfect moment with the little princess in my arms as bells started ringing in the castle and the sound spread through the city beyond: it would have been unfathomable the morning we woke up in a hut in the Korcari wilds and started this ridiculous journey together.

Regardless of what else we had done, what else we had become, this was what I wanted most to be remembered for, the achievement that all the others had merely been stepping stones for.

I was the mother of a tiny female version of Alistair, the mother of a Queen: Eleanor Theirin, my crowning achievement.


	7. Friend (denouement)

_Moira,_

_Her name is Cassandra, and I will never be first in Cullen’s life ever again. Maker’s mercy, if Alistair is half as smitten as Cullen is we’re going to have a huge problem on our hands. She hasn’t been set down once yet in her life; when I’m not feeding her and she’s not being doted on by Cullen, she is being fought over by Dorian and Josephine._

_I am sending you Vivienne and Leliana, as soon as I can get them out the door. Vivienne is hard to get used to, but she was the best healer in the Inquisition until you brought me Anders, and she has already worked miracles in Val Royeaux for Divine Victoria. You don’t have the magical resources I do, so sending you a mage to give you a once-over is the best excuse I could find to send Leliana to you._

_Keep her as long as you can. She knows to send me a raven as soon as she has news. I expect a letter at your earliest convenience! Also, in a few months we should try to meet; if you have a daughter like you think, we should do what we can to ensure they grow up together. If I’d had a friend like you as a child, the trials of my life would have been immeasurably easier to handle._

_If I have any pull with the Maker whatsoever, know that I am praying for your comfort and safety, and may Andraste herself oversee the birth of your little one._

_Evelyn_

_*_

_Evelyn,_

_Her name is Eleanor, Alistair’s idea to honor my mother. Your sending of Vivienne was well done indeed, as she determined right after she arrived that the cord was wrapped around Eleanor’s neck and arm, and was able to unwrap it prior to my going into labor. She said she did something to speed things up, as well, and for that I am infinitely grateful._

_You are one of the greatest blessings of my life. Ever since you forced yourself into Alistair’s good graces and set about fixing everything that was wrong in my world, I have found nothing but joy. That I am composing birth announcements for my friends and family rather than lying dead in the Deep Roads is attributable to you and you alone. I will never have the means to thank you properly, as you deserve, and for that I am truly sorry._

_I want nothing more than to watch my daughter grow up alongside yours. Because of you, I have that chance._

_I regret to have to ask you for yet another favor, as if I did not already owe you enough. Alistair has made it a point that we have no mages in Denerim (not officially, anyways) and that the best healers we’ve known have either passed on or been swallowed up by the Inquisition. Since you have more magical resources than we do, can you keep your eyes peeled for a respectable healer we could keep on staff? I know Ferelden isn’t known to be a pillar of academia, but perhaps there are Ferelden mages somewhere who would like to come home. Please do not send me Vivienne._

_Moira_

_*_

_Moira,_

_I know I’ve never told you this, since I hate it vehemently, but my middle name is Eleanora. I understand she was named for your mother – which is beautiful, by the way – but I must admit in the darker parts of my mind I fancy she was named for me._

_You should also know that Alistair blamed you for an utterly terrible comment about a snoufleur. You frankly aren’t capable of such a heinous thing, and I am righteously indignant on your behalf. Also, the only way you could possibly know I swelled up like a dead fish is if Leliana told you as much when she arrived. I’m going to let Regis loose in Leliana’s rooms while she’s gone. She will never get the smell of wet dog out of her underwear, mark my words._

_That might not be the thing to say to her Ferelden lover, now that I consider it. I’m not starting this letter over, though; I trust you not to despise me for it._

_Regarding your mage request: I met three or four likely candidates in Ferelden in the months immediately following the Breach War. I have Dorian investigating where they ended up. At least one attempted to join the Wardens, but the others are viable candidates. Whoever I send will have a letter of recommendation signed by myself and Dorian both when they arrive._

_Is Vivienne still there? I expected her to stop in Skyhold on her way back to Val Royeaux but I have seen no sign of her. The woman is a force of nature, but she has this disgust for her fellow mages that doesn’t sit well with me. She is trustworthy and invaluable, but not someone I could easily call friend. I’m sure you can imagine what Anders had to say._

_I miss you madly. As glad as I am that we are able to share in this time of our lives, I desperately wish we could do it_ together _rather than with all of Ferelden lying between us. The Pavus’ have returned to Tevinter – a summer house a safe distance from Minrathous – and the rooms you occupied have become my favorite haunt. I had Josephine reset them to how you left them, and I try to imagine you are still here and have only stepped out for a moment._

_Evelyn_

_*_

_Evelyn,_

_Alistair has officially apologized for the horrible snoufleur slander. Thank you for bringing it to my attention before it could fester and permanently damage the trust in my marriage. I know nothing about the ‘dead fish’ of which you speak, and Leliana is claiming innocence. I’m sure you can find_ some _slight for which the release of an adolescent mabari into her lingerie chest is an acceptable punishment._

_Leliana left two days after Sketch arrived; I assume she will return to Skyhold before this letter arrives. Sketch seems to be a good fit, and his history with Leliana made his presence easier to become accustomed to.  Imagine my surprise when, less than a week later, Finn also rolled in. I don’t know how you found him, but thank you. He has claimed a tower of the castle for himself. Sketch prefers doing to reading, so they have very different approaches. I think they will be wonderful additions, and I cannot thank you enough for sending them to me. That they are Ferelden will help the castle staff get used to having mages around; you could not have chosen better._

_Vivienne was gone almost immediately after Eleanor was born (and you can absolutely think she was named for you if it makes you happy). She took ship from here and so likely skipped right over Skyhold._

_I never had a sister. Oriana, Fergus’ late first wife, was a wonderful person, but we were never close. Alistair has never had much family. You have settled quite nicely into that void, filling it as if it never existed. The more time passes, the less I understand how I functioned without you in my life. Your constant antagonism of Alistair is the funniest fucking thing I have ever seen, I hope you know that. Your last letter to him, with the bit about the Varghest and the Bogfisher? Maker take you, I thought he was going to die. He honestly laughed to the point he could not breathe._

_And how do you keep finding all this cheese? Stop sending cheese! You brilliant maniac._

_Hug Lana for me. And Cullen. And Dorian. And little Cass. And… Maker’s breath, just run around and hug everyone. I’m sure you already do._

_Moira_

_PS if you really want a mabari to destroy a lingerie chest, grind up a beef bone and sprinkle it in the bottom of the drawers. Under no circumstances are you to indicate to Morrigan that it is even remotely possible to encourage a mabari to eat underwear._

_*_

_Moira,_

_I have had sisters before. They sucked. If what we have is what sisters are supposed to be, then you are the greatest sibling I have, the best I have ever known. Alistair is a twat. Is he reading over your shoulder? I certainly hope so. TWAT, SIRRAH!_

_Since you seem to have developed an aversion to cheese (does Alistair know about this?) I am instead including with this letter the only thing from Orlais I think you might care about: books. Dorian has overloaded my library, and I am sending you a sampling of things I think you might appreciate. Dorian seems to think you and Alistair need a pair of Orlesian masks made, in case you must sit through any more talks with Celene. Since she hasn’t met you, it stands to reason that such a summit might yet happen. Actually, its probably a really good idea and I’m going to go tell him and Josephine to get on it._

_It should be noted that Leliana_ absolutely _knew the bone powder trick. I’m not sure which of us is in more trouble. Has she written you yet? It is sure to be scathing._

_I received an interesting letter from Marian Hawke (the Champion of Kirkwall, the heroine of Varric’s book) that I would like the opportunity to discuss with you. How do feel about a bit of subterfuge?_

_I’m not sure you knew, but Morrigan never returned. She left, what, a day or two after your arrival? I have heard nothing from her since she and Kieran disappeared, and honestly I don’t expect to. I’m not at all sure where she’d gone, but she and I were never as close as you and she were._

_I’m so glad Sketch and Finn are to your liking. I must admit, it was an easy match to make once their backgrounds were made known. They were both very glad to return to Ferelden with such an auspicious appointment. Please do not hesitate to ask if there is anything else I can aim this ponderous machine at for you. It will be some time yet before I can leave Cass and start hunting holdout templars and blood mages again, and so scholarly pursuits are my salvation for now._

_My love to little Eleanor_

_(and you & Alistair as well, of course)_

_Evelyn_

_*_

_Evelyn,_

_Alistair was definitely reading over my shoulder. I don’t know what he’s cooking up for you, but it bears a very peculiar smell. Best of luck with that._

_I’m not sure how you manage to pick ten tomes I didn’t already have – and actually had wanted for awhile – but I definitely prefer the gift of books to the gift of cheese. Endless cheese. This man and his cheese, I swear. I very recently came across quite a significant supply of Antivan leather – a dear friend has come to visit – and I’m sending along enough for you and Leliana to treat yourself to new shoes. Leliana will know what to do, I’m sure._

_I’ve already started sparring again, when Eleanor is napping in the afternoon. Surely you’re not limited to scholarly pursuits? Get up and move, you will feel better, I promise. Alistair is playing nice; he is still winning handily, but he isn’t destroying me in the training yard like we all know he could._

_Strange that you wrote me of Morrigan; a letter from her arrived mere hours after your last. She left me no way to write her back, but she does seem safe and hale. I would be surprised if you do not hear from her soon, if you have not already; she indicated an intention to correspond with you._

_Before I commit to any opinions on subterfuge, I would like more information. Who is your new target? Are you close with Viscount Hawke? And what could any of this possibly have to do with me?_

_And, last but definitely not least, it would probably be in everyone’s best interests if I took the time to sit down with Celene. I am in no mood – nor shape! – to travel to Val Royeaux. Nor would an invitation to Denerim be in the best taste, given Ferelden’s history. Would you be so kind as to have Josephine write to me? Between her and my own ambassadors, I am sure we can come up with something._

_All my love to you & yours,_

_Moira_

_*_

_Moira,_

_I have a scheme. A plot, even. A plan for some serious shenanigans._

_It involves Varric. Hawke has requested aid in doing something special for him, and has given me his birth date and requested my assistance. The first thing I thought of was to set up some ridiculous story for him, something no one would ever believe, that he could write about if he so choose._

_I can’t put the details in writing – not something like this, at least – and it will take some doing to put together. What I need to know is (1) are you interested in a short jaunt of less than a week to Kirkwall, and (2) are you willing to be involved in an outright lie in order to give Varric an adequate thank-you for everything he’s done. Also, it is an excuse for me to start training again. Your letter was the influence I needed to get Cullen to let me start swinging daggers at things again. The man has been an overprotective ass since I popped out his baby. Go figure._

_Can we take a moment to laugh at the sheer amount of correspondence circulating between Skyhold and Denerim? You’re writing Josie, myself, and Leliana. Cullen and Alistair are writing. Dorian is keeping in contact with Finn. I’m writing you and Alistair. And Josie is having a side conversation with both your Minister of Information and the Orlesian Ambassador to Ferelden. I love it._

_And, yes, I did hear from Morrigan. Likely I received my letter close to the same time you received yours. Leliana seemed to think she knew where Morrigan and Kieran had gone. I wasn’t particularly interested in following the lead, but if you are I will unleash the Nightingale on her._

_I’m sending your new masks along with this missive; tell me what you think!_

_Your sister,_

_Evelyn_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I posted part 4 before finishing this, I can't really call this a spoiler for the next story. But! THIS WAS TOTALLY A SPOILER FOR THE NEXT STORY. Head's up.


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